Florida Virtual School Suffers Data Breach

Mar 10, 2018

The Florida Virtual School reported Friday that it is offering free identity protection services to students and former students whose personal information may have been compromised in what it calls "a data security incident."

According to a release from the school, the incident could involve some personal information in school records, including students' names, dates of birth, school account usernames and passwords, physical school identification, as well as parents' names and parent emails.

Officials said they believed at this time that roughly 368,000 students were potentially impacted by the incident, though they added that no financial information was affected.

Florida Virtual School said it learned of a possible breach on February 12 of this year, and launched an immediate comprehensive IT security investigation.

Officials with FLVS added that an independent forensic cybersecurity investigation firm was hired to assess the scope of the breach and take action to prevent a recurrence.

FLVS said in a release that Leon County Schools, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the FBI were notified, as well.

School officials said that, in order to reduce the risk that any student information could be misused for identity theft, FLVS is offering potentially impacted students one year of free identity protection services through Experian.

FLVS officials said the offer is available to students whose information was in the FLVS database from May 2, 2016 to February 12, 2016, when authorities say they believe this incident occurred.

School authorities said qualifying students or their parents can learn more and sign up for identity protection services at www.experianidworks.com/FLVS .

FLVS officials said the security incident also included the personal information of approximately 1,867 teachers.

Potentially impacted teachers and school staff were being contacted by FLVS individually, according to the establishment.

Florida Virtual School develops and provides virtual K-12 education solutions to students all over Florida, the U.S. and the world.

FLVS was founded in 1997 and was the country's first, state-wide Internet-based public high school.